"Don't tase me bro" - a phrase uttered in vain by a student before his imminent tasering at a speech by John Kerry - has been named as the most memorable US quote of 2007.

Andrew Meyer made his plea as police from the University of Florida cornered him after he tried to question the former Democratic nominee for president. It became, inevitably, a YouTube sensation, graced countless T-shirts, migrated to mobile phone ringtones and was replayed by television stations around the world.

The Yale Book of Quotations listed it top of the pile in its annual round-up of the year's top 10 American quotes.

Second place went to the rambling answer Lauren Upton, South Carolina's contestant in the Miss Teen USA contest, gave when asked why only one in five Americans cannot find their own country on a map.

She said: "I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."

In third was the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who provoked laughter and derision from his hosts at Columbia University in New York when he said: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country".

Continuing the student theme, US shock-jock Don Imus earned fourth place for blurting out: "That's some nappy-headed hos there," when referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He later apologised for his remarks.

Editor Fred Shapiro, associate librarian and lecturer in legal research at the Yale Law School, said: "I'm not listing the most admirable quotes, the most eloquent quotes. It's the most memorable quotes."

Shapiro said he was in two minds about whether to include Imus' quote on the list. But he said: "My book does mix the most eloquent and magnificent quotes with the sordid and sleazy materials from recent times. There are some real jarring juxtapositions there. "I wanted to include the whole culture - the high and the low, the old and the new."

Shapiro released his Yale Book of Quotations last year after six years of research. It contains about 13,000 quotes, and he expects to add roughly 1,000 more quotes for the next edition in about five years.

In the meantime he will keep issuing annual top 10 lists.

The remaining top tens quotes are:

5. "I don't recall" - Former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales' repeated response to questioning at congress about the firing of US attorneys.

6. "There's only three things he [Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani] mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11" - Senator Joseph Biden at a Democratic presidential debate.

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody [US vice-president Dick Cheney] who has a 9% approval rating" - senate majority leader Harry Reid.

8. "[I have] a wide stance when going to the bathroom" - Idaho Republican senator Larry Craig on why his foot touched that of an undercover policeman at an airport toilet.

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." - Joseph Biden on Deomcratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history" - former US president Jimmy Carter.